Unstable connection - frustrating

[quolo]

I've got a Linksys 652r router and a 768/768 speed DSL connection that connects to a multipurpose Win2K server. It's been running fine, near as I can tell, till a few weeks ago.

I have a user who VPN's in from home and, starting a few weeks ago, he reports a lot of downtime in his connection - approx. 8 times a day for 1-45 minutes each. We've noticed some intermittnet downtime while in the office, but nothing lately. My user is still complaining of the VPN disconnects.

I don't even know where to begin looking for the problem. I've talked to our ISP, they assure me that their end of the connection is solid and want to infer that our lines are faulty. To verify that, I've swapped out the DSL/phone line and am running a shortish line directly to the router.

Any other ideas? Is there something that might help me track when it can't connect to my VPN user?

 

[bcastner]

Look for a firewall on his end.

 

[quolo]

I left out an important detail - when he gets disconnected from his VPN session, he finds he is also unable to reach our website (hosted on that same internal server) for a period of 1-45 minutes.

I should have included that in the original description. I also noticed this morning that for at least 20 minutes, the website was down from my home machine as well. When I got to work, everything was up and running smoothly as far as I can tell.

What could cause periodic downtimes for external users while showing no effects to internal users? Especially since we haven't had problems for 6 months, haven't changed any settings or added new equipment, and suddenly in the last couple of weeks these issues?

 

[Dudesplace]

Try this monitor to see if it truly is your connection.

http://www.2wire.com/support/shasta/HomePortal/help/broadband/sum_conn_status.html

I would suspect the VPN client for the down time..

 

[Dudesplace]

Ok, At work is it the same ISP as at home.
I have seen this problem before in my local area..
Several ISP have links to one another to speed connection in the area, and occationally that link goes down...
therefore I can't log on to my web page FTP from MY ISP..
but I can surf or anything else I want... just not in town.
Fortunatly this happined only twice.
Check with your ISP's involved and explain the problems,
Try to log the events and hopefully you get ahold of someone with some knowledge.

 

[nemotek]

by the way is that a Linksys or a D-Link Router? try accessing the set-page of that router and look for the firmware version.

try reflashing the firmware with the same version or upgrading it... see if it improves the situation.




nemotek :>

 

[quolo]

Sorry for the mistype in my first message - actually the router at work is a Zyxel Prestige 652r.

Firmware was upgraded as of a few months ago, but I'll give it another look.

The ISP we have at work is actually a different ISP than my user has. But it's in New York and the office and his home couldn't be more than 5 miles apart, so potentially there could be a fuzzy line somewhere down the line. I have spoken at length with my ISP and they haven't been able to determine much of anything about line integrity. Their customer service as a whole leaves much to be desired and we're looking at alternative solutions.

We have 2 NIC's in the server and I'm wondering if it has to do with that - either with something conflicting or if one of them is bad. I'm ordering 2 new NIC cards to see if that may be the problem.